25 Years
by olivemonkey
Summary: An AU where Steve Rogers is born 25 years later. There's still a war to fight, and Steve still feels he should be there to help fight it, but it really isn't the same kind of war … Warning for language and violence/death.


1942

The room was cold, despite all the people standing around. It wasn't particularly pleasant, but Steve guessed maybe the vaccinations had to be kept cool, or maybe the doctors would be too warm in their lab coats if the temperature was much higher. It didn't matter – he put his mind to rehearsing his life story du jour and ignored the gooseflesh on his arms.

When it was finally his turn, the doctor took only a moment to drill Steve about his family history before flipping open his paperwork. Steve tried to stand up a little straighter – just a little taller – as the doctor looked up and sighed. "Sorry, son."

"Look, just give me a chance," Steve begged.

"You'll be ineligible on your asthma alone." The doctor looked past him to the next in line, already dismissing him.

"Is there anything I can do?" Steve tried, but the other man shook his head.

"You're doing it. I'm saving your life. Next!"

"Thanks," Steve muttered, and left the line to collect his things.

##

1967

There weren't very many people in the room – just a tired-looking receptionist in slightly rumpled Army browns, a nurse smoking a cigarette, and the doctor reading a golfing magazine. The receptionist and the doctor looked up, startled, when Steve opened the door into the office's waiting room. "Am I in the right place?" Steve asked, of no one in particular. "I'd like to get a physical to enlist. If this is the right place."

"This is the right place," the doctor said. He stood up and tucked the magazine under his arm. "Sally will you get started on your paperwork. Come along behind the curtain when you're done."

"It's _Sergeant Dunbar_," muttered the woman in uniform, but handed Steve a clipboard and a pen. The nurse rolled her eyes, took a drag on her cigarette, and sprawled lower in her chair.

Steve barely had a chance to hand his completed file over to the doctor before the older man grunted and tossed the clipboard onto the counter in front of him. "Son, you're wasting my time. Asthma, fallen arches, tricuspid insufficiency … you got a death wish?"

"No," said Steve. He picked up the clipboard. "I just see the news, all the time, and I was thinking that maybe I could … help."

"Sure," said the doctor, and huffed a laugh. "Help bring home a couple of pounds of lead, maybe. Help your mom plan an Army funeral."

"My mom's dead. My dad, too. Look—" Steve held out the clipboard toward the doctor. "You must have some kind of quota you've got to meet. Don't you? Are you anywhere near making it this month?"

The doctor took the clipboard without looking at Steve. One finger tapped slowly against the rim for a second. Then he looked toward the waiting area. "Lorraine!" he shouted. "We're going to need some vaccinations back here …"

###

"You did _what_?"

"I enlisted," Steve repeated. He tried hard to sound matter of fact, but couldn't quite keep an edge of satisfaction from creeping in. "The sixteenth infantry. We ship out next week."

"Infantry." Bucky shook his head, shoved his glass back toward the bartender for a refill. "Jesus, Steve, the Army?"

"The Navy was never going to take me, Bucky, they have their pick." Steve tried for a smile. "Hey, could be worse. I didn't end up in the Marines."

The bartender slid a full pint back to Bucky, and he picked it up. He huffed a laugh, barely enough to disturb the thick layer of foam on top. "So you got your wish. Christ. Would it make me a bad person to say, 'Better you than me?' I swear I'm heading to Canada if I don't get into graduate school."

"Nah," said Steve. "You were a bad person way before now. I mean, you're drinking Old Milwaukee. Have some standards, man."

"Spoken like a man who doesn't want me buying him a round to celebrate."

"I didn't say that," Steve objected, and Bucky lifted his glass in a mocking salute .

"Good luck, Private Rogers. God knows you're going to need it."

###

He'd been warned about the heat, but it still hit him like a brick wall as he stepped down out of the plane. The heat, and the humidity: he wasn't doing anything more strenuous than carrying a backpack and already his asthma had him wheezing. Some of the other guys pushed past him down the steps out of the airplane – they already didn't much like him. Because he was scrawny, and because of the way he'd struggled in basic, they didn't want to end up having to carry his pack for him in the field. Because he was smarter than a lot of them. Because he was too dumb to shut up sometimes (or lots of times). Did it matter why, exactly? It had earned him a fat lip and a couple of black eyes (and the opportunity to come up with an alibi on the spot when the drill instructor had raised questions about those) but he'd avoided the blanket party they'd tried to throw for him back in the States, and now, they were all here to fight together. It would take an idiot to go after someone who was supposed to be guarding your back in a gunfight. Right?

Steve swallowed hard, and tried to fight off the feeling of light-headedness as he reached the bottom of the steps and started looking for his trunk.

###

He learned fast how much – or how little, really – he could carry in his pack, after the first time he fainted in the field. He woke up with a mouthful of dirt and an earful of rough laughter. It took him a moment to get up, with his legs still shaking underneath him. But he got up, and dragged his pack off his shoulders, and began to empty it there in the middle of the jungle. Two of his four canteens, his spare fatigue jacket, his trench-digging tool, and a few sealed rations – he was fairly sure he'd just throw it back up if he tried to eat anything now, anyway. Two pairs of socks and the couple of Arthur C. Clarke paperbacks he'd stupidly brought along joined the pile, and he shrugged his way back into his gear. It didn't feel much lighter, but it would have to do. He couldn't very well leave his rifle, or his own ammo or the rounds he was carrying for the machine gunner. People were counting on him to pull his own weight (ninety-eight pounds or not).

"You feeding the dinks now, Rogers?" Private Fraboni asked, and picked his way around Steve's discarded belongings. "I always thought you were a little messed up, boy, but _damn_."

"Nah," said Steve. "A week's worth of MCIs? It's my secret weapon against Charlie, man."

Fraboni laughed, and slapped Steve on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. But Steve kept his feet, and fell in line behind Lehigh and Lopez as they kicked through his things.

###

James Buchanan Barnes

94 Grove Street

New York NY 10014

_Dear Bucky,_

_I understand I'll have to start calling you "doctor" in four or five years. Maybe you won't insist on that if I don't insist that a PhD in economics means I should ask you about every cough and flu bug I catch. You might have a Manhattan address now but you're still just a jerk from Brooklyn if you ask me …_

_Vietnam's not so bad. It's not Manhattan, sure, but the local food isn't bad when you can get it. Or maybe it's not that it's good, exactly, but anything that tastes like something is better than combat rations, which taste like nothing (or worse). I wouldn't recommend getting a summer home here, Dr. Barnes, but _

_So guess who dropped by my unit for a visit last week? Captain America. Can you believe it? He looks kind of worse for the wear compared to those old comic books. He didn't talk much, just came out on stage while the band played the Stars and Stripes and said some stuff about sticking it to Charlie and that was it – back into the motorcade and on to the next camp, I guess. Before they could ask him any questions about what really happened in the bunker outside Berlin, or whether he actually tore Himmler's throat out with his bare hands. Probably a good thing – the Stars and Stripes didn't have anything about that less press conference, but we get some foreign papers here too, and they still haven't shut up about it. Poor guy. He's got this kind of crazy look, around the eyes. I guess I would too, if I was the only one like him._

_It occurs to me the only thing worse than having to call you doctor would be if you left school early with an MS instead and I had to call you "master". Take care of yourself,_

_Steve_

###

It was probably two hours before noon and, Steve was fairly sure, hot enough to fry an egg on his helmet. They were standing in the small central area of some nameless local village while the lieutenant (with the haphazard help of his translator, Lopez, who'd taken two years of high school French) tried to haggle directions and supplies out of whoever passed for a town council around here. A few of the guys had taken out a deck of cards; Steve was satisfied to lean against a fence-post and restrain himself from draining his water bottle so fast that he'd make himself sick.

The lieutenant seemed to be wrapping up his discussion – either due to hitting a lingual dead end or to getting what he wanted – and began trotting back toward where the company was waiting. Fraboni and Leibowicz, who'd gotten out the cards, started preemptively grumbling about having to put the cards away. Steve sighed, and took one last sip from the water bottle as he left the pleasant support of the fence.

The explosion almost cost him his front teeth. The water bottle jumped in his hand and he tasted blood from a split lip. Fraboni was shouting – lots of people were shouting – he couldn't see Lieutenant Parker anywhere, just a lot of smoke, and the bridge that the lieutenant and Lopez had been crossing – Steve's stomach heaved.

Movement. A couple of GI's were digging through the wreckage of the bridge. A couple more were chasing villagers as they fled. Steve's eyes tracked for a moment, for two, watching them split off in every direction.

The first gunshot cut through the shouts and the screaming. It was joined, and rejoined, by many others.

Steve dropped the bloodied water bottle, dragged the back of his hand across his face, and took off at a full sprint. The humid air felt like lead in his lungs. He was going to pay for this later, but right now—

He wasn't sure what he expected to happen when he skidded into a hut just a fraction of a second behind Lehigh. He knew what he didn't want to happen, though, and that was to watch powerlessly as the butt of Lehigh's rifle cracked across the Vietnamese woman's face.

She fell to the floor with a grunt, and Lehigh raised his rifle again. There was a kid behind her, watching with huge dark eyes – Steve didn't know which one Lehigh was aiming for.

He also didn't care. He shoved into Lehigh, catching him off-balance so that he stumbled into a chair – the rifle-butt crashed into the wall, doing no more damage than a dent to the corrugated tin. "What the fuck are you doing, Rogers?" he shouted, when he regained his balance. "Rumor has it you're a dink-lover, but Jesus _Christ_, man!"

"You can't hit her!" Steve shouted back, despite the very plain evidence that Lehigh could and had done exactly that already. "Or the kid! Come on, Lehigh, put your gun down. Please."

The 'please' was not well chosen. Lehigh's expression hardened; he put one hand in the middle of Steve's chest, and pushed. It wasn't much of a push, but Steve wasn't much either. He went flying into the opposite wall. "They killed the LT. You ain't going to stop me from paying them back."

He had one hand on the Colt on his belt when Steve lunged into him. He'd been sidelined for plenty of PE classes, but one thing he'd learned (before he'd broken his ankle) in football was how to use what little weight he had to its full advantage. He came up into Lehigh's knees and bowled him over.

The woman was screaming at both of them now, in Vietnamese or French or some mixture of both, it might as well have been Martian for all Steve knew. She shoved the child behind her as Steve prized the Colt from Lehigh's fingers and flung it across the floor.

Lehigh didn't even try to win the fight for the gun. As soon as the weapon left his hand he shifted his weight, grunted, and suddenly he was on top of Steve with one knee in Steve's belly. Steve had learned this lesson, too, in wrestling class. The lesson was,_ forge a doctor's note on the days of wrestling class_. He groaned as Lehigh adjusted his weight and ribs creaked alarmingly under the weight of the other man's knee. "Stay out of it," Lehigh spat in his face. "Stay fucking _down_, you asshole."

"Can't," said Steve, or attempted to. The sound he made wasn't much more intelligible than whatever the woman was still shouting at him, or the kid's terrified wailing. Lehigh ignored him, in any case, and retrieved the gun from where it had fallen. "Lehigh, she's a prisoner of war, you can't just—"

Steve was already moving when the gun fired. He'd intended to knock the woman down, throw her behind the straw bed, anything – but he wasn't fast enough. The sound of the gunshot seemed to hang in the air as he stared down into her horrified face. He smelled blood, and gunsmoke, and his knees gave out first. They were always doing that.

"Fuck," said someone, and Steve craned his neck. Fraboni was in the doorway, and his face was white under its tan. "What the _fuck_ did you do?"

Steve opened his mouth to answer, but found himself coughing instead. He fell into the Vietnamese woman, who caught him and lowered him to the ground. Fraboni crossed the house in two long steps and ripped Steve's flak vest open. "Rogers," he said, and swore again.

Steve looked down. The bullet had caught him at an angle, just under the edge of his flak jacket – up over his hipbone and into his belly. Gutshot. He clasped one hand over the wound – he didn't smell anything, no bowel perforation –

He looked down at his hand and the pool of red so dark it was almost black that had collected in the hollow of his hip. Fraboni caught his eye, just for a moment. Then he was up off the ground, grabbing Lehigh by the neck with one bloody hand. "You fucking idiot! Get out of here – go!"

"I didn't mean – the son of a bitch just jumped in front—" The rest of Lehigh's blubbery protests were lost as Fraboni shoved him outside.

Fraboni paused once in the doorway, squinting into the sunlight. "Fuck," he said again, and then he was gone too.

Steve stared at the ceiling and was glad he'd sent that last letter to Bucky, wondered how much time he had left and if he should write another, apologize for getting shot. He was going miss Bucky's graduation. Damn. He asked the woman for a pen, but she didn't get up – just sat with his head on her lap and her cool hands on his face, singing soft nonsense as Steve's world grew cool and small and dark.

###

1942

Erskine's eyes were too sharp, too knowing as he looked over Steve. Steve was trying not to hold his breath, and not doing a very good job of it – he felt light-headed, never having come so close to either getting caught or getting in. "Well," Erskine said, and smiled a bit. "There are already so many big men fighting this war. Maybe what we need now is the little guy – huh?" His expression took a turn toward the more serious again. "I can offer you a chance. Only a chance."

It was all Steve was ever going to need. Just the chance to do the right thing. "I'll take it," he said, and Erskine handed him back the paper with the bright, bold red 1A stamp.


End file.
